5 Ways To Call In Sick To Your Biglaw Job

How do you actually get people to believe you are too sick to work?

As I mentioned earlier today, I’m probably dying. Having the flu is like being drunk without any of the fun or reliable breathing.

I’m feeling better today than yesterday (thanks for asking), when I blew off work via a text message that read, “Not coming in tomorrow. Sorry.” Actually, I don’t remember if I included the “sorry” part, because I wasn’t, but “sorry” seems like a nice thing that I hope I said. I have a pretty sweet job for calling in sick. Here’s how it works: I get sick, I tell somebody (doesn’t really matter who), and I go back to bed.

That’s not all that different than how I rolled in Biglaw. Of course, I didn’t last very long in Biglaw. In Biglaw, people act like overcoming illness to work on documents makes them Michael Jordan in the flu game. I always thought it was stupid, and borderline malpractice, to attempt to work on sensitive client matters when you’ve got enough Duane Reade in you that it’s illegal for you to drive a car, but I’m also the guy who used to remote into work because it was “too cold” and took a “personal day” whenever Madden dropped.

Let my mistakes be your guide. Here are five times when I called in sick and I didn’t get dirty looks from all the partners when I returned. So I can only assume that these are the five situations where it’s “okay” to be sick.

I’ve put it together in the form of a listicle because I can’t be bothered to put in transitional phrases like an adult. For those who might be interested in using this list as a guide for scoring a day off, I’ve ordered this from the most believable ways to call in sick to the least…

1. I’m So Sick I’ve Ordered Somebody Else To Call In For Me.

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This is the business. Getting your wife or significant other to call in on your behalf really emphasizes the point that you are done. Bonus points if your surrogate sounds sick too. What’s the partner going to say when your wife is like, “My husband is sick and I’ve ordered him to bed”? “Oh, uhh, tell him to remote in when he can.” Please. If you are lying, incorporating somebody else into your lie is so bold that nobody can call you on it. And really, if your significant other is willing to talk to the awful people you work with, you probably really are quite ill.

2. I’ll Have What She’s Having.

Partners don’t care if you are sick. You are nothing. But they are sensitive to the possibility of your sickness infecting the whole team. If there’s somebody else on your team who is ill and took a day, that’s an open invitation for you to get the same thing, and then “take one for the team” by staying home so that the infection doesn’t spread. Sure, you can run into problems if the person you “got” it from nobly fights through their illness while you are laid up in bed, but, assuming that you are really ill, your partners will understand that you are trying to avoid getting an entire conference room sick. Worst case scenario with this plan is that you’ll have to remote in, but people will believe that you are sick.

3. Don’t Call In “Sick,” Call In With A “Disease.”

People get “sick” all the time. And they work through it, often without sympathy or a recuperative day off. But having some kind of specific disease recognized by the American Medical Association is like the gold standard of getting a sick day.

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You can’t BS this one. Nobody believes you have “stomach flu” and nobody cares if you have “strep throat.” But, man, if you can come up with some mono or tuberculosis, you’re golden, baby! Hell, even if you have some minor thing that you can work with, it’ll still be good enough to get you a day. “Sorry, I can’t come in today, I have gout.” Who gets gout? Doesn’t matter. You get a day to deal with your “gout,” so long as you are able to “manage” it going forward.

4. The Conference Call-In.

This is a high-risk, high-reward strategy. If you’ve got an early morning conference call and you call into it and sound awful, there’s a good chance that after the call the partners will (a) remark on your professionalism and (b) tell you to take the rest of the day. It’s the best of both worlds. You get the rest you need and the respect you deserve.

Of course, this strategy can also backfire. Your partners could feel like you are hamming it up. Or they could just not be human/not care about humans. You’ll know you’ve failed if after the call, the partners just say, “man, you sound sick,” before talking about action items from the call.

5. Phone Call? Aren’t We Living In The Future?

Texting or emailing in sick has some benefits over the standard phone call. It’s not a conversation. You don’t give anybody the chance to assess for themselves how sick you are or not. When writing in sick, I tried to double up declarative statements with declarative actions. I’d set my out-of-office with the exact same message I sent to the team: “I’m not in the office [this day]. Please call [secretary’s number] in case of emergency.” When you do it that way, you kind of force the partners to take an extra step to load you up with work. They still might, but at least you’ve drawn your line in the sand that for this one day, you are unavailable.

Remember folks, people don’t get fired from Biglaw for getting sick. They get fired for missing deadlines and providing poor client service, but if you are legitimately ill, you should be able to organize your schedule in a way that neither of those two things happen. Take care of yourselves, because nobody else will.

Earlier: Biglaw Health Insurance Costs: The ATL Survey Results